Jaynes wrote, “Second, consciousness does not copy experience. This further error about consciousness stems from the beginning of empiricism when Locke (1690) spoke of the mind’s ‘white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas’ (Essay II, 1.2) on which experience is copied. Had the camera been around at the time, I suggest Locke would have used it instead of blank paper as his foundational metaphor. In experience, we take successive pictures of the world, immerse them in the developer of reflection, and watch concepts, memories, and all our mental furnishings come into existence.”
